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September 08, 2020Picture Book Magic
People are often surprised to learn that a picture book begins with the words. But every children’s book editor I’ve met has preferred to read a picture-book manuscript without any images. A good ...
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June 11, 2019Confessions of an Uncertain Booklover
All my life, I’ve considered myself to be a booklover. Even my twitter handle has the word ‘literati’ in it (don’t judge me. I was a pretentious undergrad when I came up with it). English was ...
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June 03, 2019I Promise You, It's Fiction.
Full disclosure, I had another post planned to kick off my Writer in Residency here on Open Book but I decided to change topics after seeing a write-up/review of my forthcoming short story collection. ...
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April 14, 2021Ross Breithaupt on Weaving Together Music, Mourning, and the Gritty Reality of Tree Planting in His Moving First Novel
Anyone who's ever tried their hand at tree-planting in Canada knows it's an intense undertaking. For 20-year old Rory Fleck, the intensity is just what he's looking for—a place to forget himself and ...
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April 23, 2025Danny Jacob's Debut Novel is a Genre-Bending Gothic Fairy Tale
Poet and essayist Danny Jacobs is featured on Open Book today, and this time for his exciting debut novel, The Ignis Psalter (Gordon Hill Press/The Porcupine's Quill). In a multigenerational tale about ...
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August 23, 2018"I am Story": Getting to know GG Nominee Harold R. Johnson, Author of a Stunning, Genre-Defying New Memoir
Governor General’s Literary Award nominee Harold R. Johnson's newest book combines his expertise in fiction and non-fiction, in a genre-blending work that is being hailed as the crown jewel of an already ...
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April 24, 2025A Thousand Tiny Awakenings is an Anthology That Carries the Hope and Resilence of a New Generation
Independent Ontario publishers continue to amplify the voices of young and marginalized writers, and one of our most interesting new publishing houses, out of mighty Sudbury, has played a significant ...
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June 16, 2019Always A Blank Page Waiting
I remember the first time I heard a writer admit that she hated writing. It was 2011, on a panel during the Summer Writing School facilitated by the Creative Writing program at UofT’s School of Continuing ...
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June 11, 2020Kids' Club: Marsha Skrypuch on the Real-Life Hero Behind Her New Book
Author Marsha Skrypuch's Sky of Bombs, Sky of Stars (Pajama Press) traces a young girl's harrowing journey from war-torn Vietnam to the alien suburbs of Southern Ontario.Tasked with caring for the babies ...
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March 03, 2021"I Find it a Kind of Magic" David Stones on the Gift that is Inspiration & Why Amanda Gorman and Leonard Cohen Give Him Hope
David Stones' sfumato: New and Selected Poems (Blue Moon Publishers) collects the most powerful poems from Stones' previous collections and adds engaging new pieces to create a reading experience that ...